


[READ/WRITE]

by electroheartx



Series: “Rose” RM500 #928 574 624 [7]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: OCs - Freeform, RP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-25 00:31:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17111036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electroheartx/pseuds/electroheartx
Summary: An exchange of truths.





	[READ/WRITE]

**Author's Note:**

> [Part of a post-machine Connor ending AU featuring original characters.]

<We need to talk.>

 

That was the ping that had brought Rose out to the park with Reese, strolling through the chill evening air.

 

<I was thinking the same thing.>

 

The first snow of the year was falling in New York City. The flakes were of the huge, fluffy type, the kind that sticks to everything; they fluttered lazily with the breeze, branches spread wide and edges sparkling with crisp points of light as they caught the streetlamps’ rosy glow. They settled into cozy blankets that wrapped the landscape in a deceptive form of comfort.

 

Rose glanced over at Reese. He was squinting not at the snow, but against the failing sunset light, melting ice lacing his hair and eyelashes. The wisps of his breath spiraled up and away from his face; they drifted behind, meeting at a point with Rose’s, two ghosts entwining and drifting upward into the atmosphere together.

 

“So.” Reese’s eyes shifted to Rose. “Do you want to go first, or should I?”

 

Rose’s hand grazed the fluff on their back of their head absentmindedly. Realizing with a start that the snow was dampening their hair, they pulled their hood up and over their face. It was simply an added bonus that the fabric obscured their face.

 

“I’ll go first,” they volunteered, and took a slow, deep breath. “I’m... sorry for what happened at the house the other day.”

 

Reese nodded patiently. “I know, you already apologized for it.”

 

“Yeah, but -- “ Rose paused. “I guess… I realized that I’ve been. A little selfish. There are things I’ve been reluctant to tell people, things that are… critically important to our safety and security, things that don’t make sense without context. And I haven’t said anything, just because…” Their mouth dragged out the words. “I’m, ashamed, I suppose.”

 

“Things like what?” Reese tilted his head at them, the collecting snow on his hair bright against the jet. While Rose was bundled in layers, Reese hadn’t brought a jacket, wasn’t wearing anything extra at all; if the temperature was bothering him, he showed no expression of it.

 

“I mean...” Rose stuffed their hands in their pockets, rolling their shoulders back to ease the tension priming in their muscle fibers. “I told you about my first safe house. I didn’t tell you exactly what happened, but I should have. In fact, I should have just told you everything that we’d been through up until you showed up, but…”

 

“But?”

 

“I wanted you to think I had it handled.”

 

“Ah.” Reese peered into the distance, snow lit with blush and lavender evening tones. The white balance read at slightly at different hues between his mismatched eyes, which he always found more amusing than anything else; it distracted him from the feeling of dread gathering in his stomach at Rose’s words, their intent echoing too raw and bright in the corners of his own mind.

 

He glanced up; Rose had stopped short behind him, was peeling off their fluffy glove, skin beneath already deactivated. They held up their bare palm to him, and he noted with amusement how -- for once -- the manufactured ivory and charcoal blended more naturally into their surroundings than the rest of them.

 

Perhaps even the unnatural had its season.

 

“Can I show you now?” Rose asked, and Reese hesitated.

 

He knew the connection would only be one-way -- their memory to his -- but then they might ask to reverse the connection, and… his insides curdled at the thought of what they’d find.

 

_I should have just told you everything._

 

But Rose was offering, and he wanted to know what they had to hide. They _needed_ him to know. It was his duty to his friend, to their safe house, to take their hand.

 

He’d deal with the question of his own mind when it came to it.

 

“Alright.”

 

Reese doubled back to Rose, pressing his palm to theirs. Skin flickered back to bare pale; though Rose had seen it before, they still half-expected the projected geometric patterns on his hands to remain printed on the stark shell beneath.

 

<Reese interlocked his fingers through Rose’s, and in a flash he was in their mind, flying backward in time -- he saw himself through their eyes, turning back toward the golden cornfield where he’d disappeared, a lonely echo in their heart. Travels, a stray deviant here and there, always leaving… then two that stayed. A repurposed store interior, a beaded heart. A jagged shard of glass. A severed tongue. Immeasurable pain. [#28457f]

 

<Faster now, in the direction of the ocean. The rising skyline of New York. A deviant on the run, a gun thrown, yellow lines. An abandoned house, unrecognizable but familiar, an empty shell of what was to come.

 

<And there they were: Steady, Aria, Stabby, in quick succession. The looming expanse of the junkyard; Cross. Eleven. Hands. A screaming ghost. Noah with the emerald eyes, a tower of boxes, soft rain falling in an alleyway -- the static phantom again, what the hell _is_ that? -- Collapsing in the hallway, a backpack filled with blood, his own lips pressed to the top of Rose’s head. A taller man lined in gold by the shore, teeth sharper than knives. Entering the house without an answer, fingers of fear gripping their throat, and Cross again, arms filled with biocomponents; the same back room, Rose’s own arms deep in Vida’s chest, face pressed into Steady’s shoulder, jacket wet. Glowing liquid swirling on a bartop. Snow. His own face, fingers wound together, and -- >

 

Reese’s mind clipped back to the present as the memories did, and he pitched forward slightly, his processes stuttering.

 

His first reactive emotion was -- linguistic results didn’t quite surface a name for the raw, hollow ache in his chest. Almost a nausea, if he had the functioning components. He wasn’t entirely sure how much of it was residual from the transfer, and how much of it was his own systems being overwhelmed by a wave of horrible truth.

 

He’d known that the road Rose had chosen would be tough; he’d walked it himself. But some part of him had set aside a small slice of hope that their journey would be easier than his own, that the memories he’d packaged would alleviate the struggle -- and true, it had saved their life, but the cost had been far too high. And the New York Safe House, while currently a haven from what Reese had left behind, was just as damaged, just as vulnerable, just as broken.

 

His friend had been through more, so much more than he had expected. And what was worse, at least in Reese’s mind, was that they’d both made the same mistake -- in opposing directions.

 

“Bud…” He started.

 

Rose jumped on the word, readying a million explanations to fill the wide gulf of vulnerability that had suddenly opened beneath their feet. Reese knew everything now: the blood, the blindness, the messages, the meetings, the monsters in their mindspace.

 

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions, but -- “

 

“Nah, I… I get it.” Reese cut them off, shaking his head. “I just… wish you’d shown me earlier. I didn’t, know just how bad it was.”

 

Rose stared at him in silence.

 

Bad. It had been bad, yes. Objectively, they knew this. But to hear it from Reese? With no contest to their mental situation, no revulsion, no confusion -- Only acceptance, understanding? Validation?

 

Rose was left without traction, no controversy for their words to grapple with. It had been such a long road, suffering quietly under the weight of everything, that for their internal struggle to be so suddenly _well and truly_ recognized felt… both immensely relieving, and achingly hollow. Laid open. Vulnerable.

 

They were -- had been, ever since the outburst on the front porch -- far beyond the stage of tears. Unable to queue any sort of response, they let their gaze drift absently to one side.

 

Reese read the lost expression on Rose’s face, reached out to pull them back into orbit. The motion and the cold slick of his jacket against their face snapped them back into current space-time, and they wrapped their free arm around his middle, grateful for the warmth. At this point, that was really all they needed.

 

“Oh, I do have a question. Couple of ‘em, actually.” Reese’s voice broke the silence after a time, bassy and rumbling through Rose’s own body. They raised their head, eyebrows following.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“What the hell happened to Eleven?”

 

Rose paused for a moment. Hadn’t he seen --

 

“Not as in, what _happened_ happened, obviously. _That_ was… fucked up.” There it was, eloquently framed. “Just. Are his engineers high, or something? New body looks like a feral dog someone kicked one too many times. Those, eyes, and those _teeth_ , man.”

 

Rose let out a snort. “I don’t think he looks _bad_. Just. Really tired, I guess.”

 

“No kidding. Packed with more experimental tech than one frame can handle, probably on a modified power source, and I don’t doubt they run him into the ground _because they can_. Gotta wonder how long it’ll be until he snaps.”

 

Rose had already been wondering for a while, and he knew it. At their pensive look, Reese’s mischievous tendencies got the better of him; he rolled his head to one side, fixing Rose with a cockeyed grin.

 

“Hoping he’ll be even more fun if you buy him another drink?”

 

The implication sank in slowly, but Reese laughed at the comical scowl on Rose’s face when it was caught. They shot back as though they’d been electrified, slapping his arm.

 

“It’s not like that, and you know it.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Reese winced, grinning off the flashing damage indicators at the edges of his sight; they’d smacked him in the arm with the bad shoulder. He rolled back the limb in question and cleared his throat, face falling somber now that he’d had his fun.

 

“Seriously though. We should… probably see someone about your memory corruption, Bud.”

 

The scowl vanished; a slow blink from Rose. “I… what?”

 

“You know, the…” Reese gestured vaguely in the shape of a tall, human-like being. “Uh… staticky… phantom thing. Brain Ghost Guy.”

 

“Oh.” Rose closed their eyes, pressing their knuckles to their face. The V.E. dragged the echoes of its screeching to the forefront of their mind, doggedly helpful as always; with it came the familiar dragging of hollow claws on their spine. ”Right, that.”

 

“Maybe Aria could find us an engineer around who’d be able to help with that. I mean, I’d take you to see Sky, if I could, but...”

 

“I don’t know. It’s fine, really.” Rose’s fingers spread outward, and they mashed their face into their palms, voice muffled. The static still keened in the corners of their ears. “It’s not doing anything, except being annoying, I guess. And it’s only in a couple of old memories. If it were important, I’m sure it would have come up again by now.”

 

“Well yeah, but corruption has a tendency to spread, Bud -- “

 

“Reese.” Rose threw down the veil of their hands and fixed him with a tired stare. “It’s fine. Bringing it up just makes things worse.”

 

Reese stared back for a few moments, eyes challenging. But Rose challenged right back -- something he’d always respected about them -- and he had a dawning feeling that their irritation was borne of something more tangible than mere inconvenience.

 

“Well, as long as it stays isolated. If it becomes an issue, you’ll tell me, yeah?”

 

The snowfall had grown heavier now, both their heads and shoulders nearly covered in soft white cling. Rose began an exercise they had learned over the past few months: bringing all of their processing power to their external senses, they concentrated on the the muffled silence, the stinging cold in their lungs, the brilliant spectrum of colors found in the smallest particles of ice in the world around them. Time seemed to slow around them as their mind accelerated: they counted the number of snowflakes in Reese’s hair, watched the spiral of his breath collide in the most gentle way with the falling snow, calculated the exact difference in average Hex value between each of his eyes.

 

The resulting data streams overwhelmed Rose’s mindspace, pushing out passive threads; their current and present physical existence became their singular object of focus. And the V.E., finding its audience had become uninterested in its screaming prize, slowly retreated to its lair.

 

Rose exhaled, their mental space theirs again. Their processed slowed, the world speeding up to match; it had only taken a few real-world seconds to find equilibrium again.

 

“Of course,” they said, and fell silent.

 

The conversation stalled.

 

Reese sensed the opportunity here to to take initiative. He’d made up his mind, now: Rose had just bared their soul to him, owned up to their mistakes, let themselves be more vulnerable than they’d been with anyone else. And it had been far, far worse than he’d expected.

 

_I should have just told you everything._

 

He’d do the... honorable thing, and own up to his, as well. No matter how messy it was. He owed them that much. In the spirit of security, in the spirit of fairness.

 

_I’m ashamed, I suppose._

 

He offered his hand to Rose this time, skin fluttering back over plastic and rubber molding. They raised their eyebrows.

 

“What -- “

 

“I’ve been selfish, too,” he said, “And I figure that since you shared, now’s as good a time as any for you to know what… what happened to the Chicago Safe House.”

 

Rose stared at him, mouth slightly agape. “You… you don’t have to, just because I...”

 

“No, I want to show you.” Reese wiggled his fingers toward them. “Offer ends in five seconds. Take it or leave it, Bud.”

 

It took Rose four agonizingly long seconds to decide, and in that span of time Reese nearly crawled out of his own skin with anxiety. Because for all of his own manufactured trashy garbage aesthetic and jokes about stupidity, one of the things Reese hated the most was admitting that he was truly, honestly flawed.

 

But then their hands made contact, and --

 

<Once again they were in the golden cornfield, this time from Reese’s perspective. A view from between the stalks, a shock of red turning back to find him, but the angle was... wrong? Had he been there the whole time? Had they simply not seen him? An internal apology, turning away.

 

<The images continued: a sunlit train home to Chicago; reuniting with a posse, three deviants of varied shapes and sizes. The deviant enclave, bustling with activity -- familiar from his other memories, so many friends, a family, more deviants at once than Rose had ever seen in person. Dim nights spent avoiding hunters lined in various shades, gunshot trades and supply raids and junkyard scavenging. Laughter, comradery. Things were going well.

 

<Too well. An overconfident misstep into a raid that was rigged to catch deviants, falling straight into tragedy. One of the three went down, a bullet to the head. Then a second friend, a second bullet.  A third, and reeling akin to nausea, a gunshot impact to Reese’s own chest. The looming face of a single hunter bent over him: blonde, soft, jacket traced in a shade of fresh fruit, skull set with the most soulless eyes they’d ever seen. The smallest of smirks plastered across her smooth face at having accomplished her mission.

 

<And on Reese’s end, blinding rage.

 

<A rush at the hunter, a battle that ended with unexpected fury overpowering cool logic, tearing her apart limb from limb. Pinning her to the floor, bodies spattered with a color Rose could not see. Her own gun pressed to her forehead, hesitation at that same smirk on a neckless face, a voice from a lungless throat. Blood-speckled LED tinged gold with the success of a completed upload.

 

_ <{You will not escape me, #313-046-545.} _

 

<A scream -- not from the head on the floor. A bullet nesting itself between the soulless eyes.

 

<Going home. Mourning, rebuilding. Choosing not to move the safe house. Selecting a new right-hand group of deviants, more somber this time, less laughter.

 

<Then coming home. The deviant enclave again, but this time on fire. The soft-lined hunter resurfacing in the flames with a new body, rage burning cold in her sterling eyes. The bustling activity gone, the majority of the crowd lying in pieces as the flames reduced them to pure elements -- Then a burst of cool air on their face, turning from the scene and fleeing into the night streets. Darkness, wandering for who knows how long. Finding themselves on train to New York.>

 

Rose and Reese returned to present consciousness separately, but the first thing they both registered was a desperate pressure alert at the edges of their vision. Right hand contusions, born of carbon fiber fingers digging into artificial skin, knuckles pressed together so tightly that the plastic audibly complained with a series of squeals and pops.

 

They both jumped at the pain, tearing away from each other in an instant.

 

“I…” Rose started, breathless. They gently nursed the warped surfaces of their hand, skin reappearing as the shell was massaged back into shape. “That was -- ”

 

“Shea.” Reese spat the name into the snow with more venom than they’d ever heard from him. “Serial #313-055-295. Top of their class at the Chicago Cyberlife Tower.”

 

Rose already knew her name, knew everything, now. Reese’s mechanical recitation was for his own benefit. The physical incantation of the hunter’s identification drew the threat out of mere memory, manifesting it into an object they could mold and observe. Balance their fear against. Plan for, in the case of an unlikely event.

 

The empty look on Shea’s face in the fire haunted the both of them. Of course, the violet-striped hunter that had killed May and Forrest had had the same glazed expression -- as every hunter did -- right up until the end, when he deviated. And he, too, might still be out there now, searching for Rose. But there was a marked difference in Shea, one that Reese had long ago discerned in his own days as a newly-awakening hunter.

 

Shea was already a deviant. And somehow, she’d staunchly chosen the side of her oppressors. She was not tangled in the web of apathy and experimentation, like Eleven. She was not bound to any contract, collared by any program. There was no apparent reason for her behavior, aside from merely delighting in climbing ranks on the backs of her own kind.

 

This was more terrifying than anything else they had yet encountered.

 

Their thoughts tangled in the weight of this, what slipped out of Rose’s mouth was a classic standby.

 

“I’m so sorry, Reese. It wasn’t your -- “

 

“It was, and you know it.” Reese’s eyes flashed two distinct shades of anger and self-loathing.

 

Rose’s mouth snapped shut at his tone. He was right. And now that there were no secrets, no reasons left to hide, Reese’s rage and hatred -- for Shea, for Cyberlife, for himself -- began to spill freely, sweeping him up, bearing both him and Rose along on its tide.

 

Reese began to pace back and forth, creating circles of dark footprints where the snow retreated from his boots. He dragged his fingers up across his forehead, gripping his hair in his fists, the light dusting of flakes crushed to water against his palms.

 

“If I hadn’t been such a _cocky bastard_ , she wouldn’t have caught us. If I’d just kept my _cool_ , they might’ve survived -- “

 

“Reese -- “

 

“We might have gotten away. But no, I _had_ to get revenge. I threw _everything_ away for it. I led her straight to us. I don’t deserve to b-- ”

 

“REESE!”

 

Rose seized the shoulders of the much larger android and shook him with surprising strength. Reese stared back with wide eyes, allowing himself to sway in their grip, words dying in his throat. His unexpected aggressor was far too short to hide from beneath his layer of curls, just as snarled now as the rest of his emotions.

 

“You made a mistake,” Rose said, their voice nearly as cold as the air around them. “It’s in the past. Now you’re living with the consequences, just like me. You understand what you did wrong, you learn from it, you move on. Or, you quit.”

 

Rose leaned their head closer, lowering their volume to a whisper.

 

“Those are your only two options, and I’m not going to let you quit.”

 

Reese let the tension in his body fall, slowly. As he relaxed, Rose released their grip on his shoulders, icy hands moving to their pockets instead to regain some semblance of warmth.

 

“It isn’t the same, though, is it?” Reese ran his fingers through his hair once more, this time to shake out the tangles he’d created. “This sounds so _fucked up_ to say, but I just. I wish... I don’t know. That it had happened earlier? So I didn’t have to lose... _so many_ goddamned people.”

 

His voice breaking, he pressed his palms into his eyes with a frustrated noise. Rose’s face twisted at his statement for just a fraction of a second -- a hot flare of offense for May and Forrest -- though they knew, in the most logical parts of themselves, that he didn’t mean to trivialize their own issues.

 

Reese was struggling. Whereas Rose had dealt with their trauma long ago, he had only just begun. That was the only morbid advantage here: that Rose was now able to use what they had learned to help him through something they themselves had been forced to navigate alone.

 

It helped, they thought wryly, that he’d now seen their own struggle firsthand.

 

“I know,” Rose said carefully. “But neither situation is better, nor worse.”

 

“I just…” Reese pulled his hands away from his face, hot streaks from his eyes cooling and stinging the skin of his palms. Rose inhaled sharply at his expression: in the place of their beloved best friend stood an utterly broken man, almost unrecognizable in his grief.

 

“I’m not the guy I thought I was, Bud. That _you_ … thought I was. I don’t know what the hell I am anymore, besides a _coward._ ” He sniffed and scowled into the sky, dark now with the veil of nightfall. “I don’t know what I thought I was doing, coming here. And I’m sorry for… for hiding all of this from you, for so long.”

 

Rose felt themselves suddenly gripped by an unknown force; they stood frozen, unsure what to do with the person in front of them. Every inch of them wanted to move to Reese, comfort him, but he suddenly seemed... so foreign. Maybe he was right: they didn’t know who he was, not really.

 

“I… You don’t have to apologize,” they heard themselves saying. “And I’m glad you’re here. We’ll work it out together.”

 

“Yeah, but. What if it happens again? What if it’s my fault -- again? I know you want to help, but if I just can’t control myself, I...”

 

Reese drifted off. In the silence, Rose’s heart was quietly shattering into a million pieces, scattering to the breeze with the snow; it was that evening on the front porch again, hearing their own words out of Reese’s mouth -- only this time, he wasn’t doing it consciously. They shifted, hands still in their pockets, unable to break free from their place.

 

Reese sniffed again and cleared his throat, wiping his face with his jacket sleeve.

 

“So uh, I think… think it’d be for the best if I just.” He motioned his head toward the edge of the park. Edge of New York. Began to back away, rolled his body toward goodbye.

 

Seeing him turn away, the reality of the figure’s -- of _Reese’s_ departure -- finally electrified Rose into motion.

 

“Wh-- No!“

 

They lunged forward, catching his hand again. The motion stopped him at his shoulder; he stood silent, looking at them out of the corner of his eye. When he didn’t fight, they moved to grab his other hand as well, holding both tightly with the silly thought that it might, perhaps, make it twice as hard for him to pull away.

 

“Please, don’t leave.” Rose was begging, and made no pretense of hiding it. There was no longer anything to hide. The person in front of them, damaged and changed though he may be, was still their best friend, still needed guidance, as they needed his.

 

Their mind queued something simple to say next, but a funny thing happened: the words, usually so freely spoken, seemed to stick in their in their throat. Minor panic rose in their chest before they coughed them aside quickly, scowling and changing their tone to something more casual.

 

”I just fucking _told_ you I wouldn’t let you quit, anway.”

 

Maybe there was a still limit how much vulnerability they could handle at once.

 

Reese let out a snort.

 

“I -- “ A long sigh. “Alright, Bud. You got me. I don’t know what else to say.”

 

Rough fingers closed around delicate knuckles; smaller thumbs traced the encrypted lines imprinted on skin.

 

“How about this:” Rose took a breath, their voice modulation shifting to mimic that of Reese. “We’re all just doing the best we can, and we’re stronger together.” Familiar words, repeated back to the one who spoke them first.

 

“Heh.”

 

There it was, a shade of the Reese they’d known before.

 

Rose fixed him with determined eyes. “We _will_ figure it out, I promise.”

 

Reese’s gaze met theirs, his own eyes sheepish with guilt. “Yeah. And ‘til then, I guess we just… keep living the days like they’re our last, huh?”

 

“...Yeah.”

 

With nothing left to say, they pulled each other in; Rose threw their arms high around Reese’s shoulders, forcing themselves to stand on their toes to reach, but they paid it no mind. He curled and clung tightly to them, face buried in the top of their hood.

 

Were it not for the steadfast tick of ever-present internal clocks, they’d have long lost track of the time they’d been standing there together.

 

“I, uh.” Reese broke the silence suddenly, his voice low. Another sniff -- this time one of bitter amusement at himself. “I’m kinda glad you stopped me, I didn’t really know where I was headed, anyway.”

 

Rose snorted into his jacket, but said nothing; they only pulled him closer to themselves, the snow mantled on their heads forming one soft sheet between the two of them.

 

[END]


End file.
